Page 3 of Saint of the Shadows

That inflamed her anger further. The urge to curse escalated to needing to punch something. “Are your beds full?”

“Almost, but I have a discharge coming up. Why?” A mousy brown lock of hair had escaped from Rossi’s elastic headband. She tried to flick it back out of her face.

“I have half occupied. Could you watch my beds for a moment?”

“Is it Opposite Day?” Rossi shifted the load in her arms like a squirming toddler to free one of her hands. She touched Marisol’s forehead. “You’re not coming down with something?”

“I’m fine.” A lie. Marisol had better mix it with the truth, so Rossi would buy it. “Just haven’t eaten much.”

“Get going.”

Then Marisol ran. Ran past the treatment rooms. Ran down the winding hallways. She burst through the double doors and continued into the closed portions of the clinics.

In the cover of darkness, she punched the wall.Ow!It didn’t make things better. And now she needed a bandage for the broken skin on her knuckle. She’d swipe one from a treatment room.

She bound into the treatment room, flung open the cabinets, and groped around the lower shelf for—voila!—bandages. As she taped her finger by the murky outline of streetlights, she realized the motion sensors hadn’t turned on the lights. Strange. She’d better let maintenance know of an electrical issue.

She closed the cabinets. An inky splotch near the cabinet handle shimmered, reflecting the yellow glow from outside. Upon further inspection, the splotch was a handprint.

In fresh blood.

Her stomach muscles tightened. She spun around to see an empty, undisturbed exam table.

However, on the floor next to it, a beam of light landed on a pulsating black heap.

“Hello?” Marisol called out a greeting fit for de-escalation rather thanI know where the scalpels are and how to use them.

The heap struggled to stand and collapsed back onto the floor.

“You’re injured. I’m a nurse.” The job had a way of overriding the typical fight-flight response.

It grabbed the exam table and hoisted itself up. An impossibly tall figure stood wearing all black, resembling the Patron Saint. Or rather a PatronSaint. He wore a molded suit that hugged his heavyweight form. He flicked back his cape, caught by some unseen wind. At last, his head tilted upright. A leather half-hood encased his face, emphasizing his square jaw. But the most remarkable sight was his eyes. Even in the darkness, they were a penetrating blue, like the sun through stained glass. His gloved hands glistened with blood. His blood?

Marisol pressed her back into the cabinets. “I can help you. If you follow me to the ER–”

“I can’t do that!” He groaned and immediately hugged his wound. An object stuck into his injured side. He gripped it and breathed through his teeth. “People can’t... know about... me. They’ll want to... know who... I am.”

Even straining, he had a velvet-rich baritone voice. It soothed her enough to release her white-knuckle grip from the counter edges. Marisol reached toward the light switch above the counter.Click.In the light, she saw his blood pool around a large gash. Like trauma surgery, ruptured organs, and rapid infusion gash. She couldn’t let a patient bleed to death on an account of his pride. “Seriously, man. You need to come with me. It’s pretty bad.”

The man recoiled. “Forget it. I can do this myself.” He grunted and fidgeted with the object in his side.

“Not by the looks of it.” Marisol touched his arm. “You can’t do this on your own.” The physicalcontact between them crackled like static electricity, standing the hair on her arm on end. Her eyes caught onto his, and those blues seared into her. She went rigid.

What was it about him? He was different. Taller and fitter than the other dressed-up patients. And he added an electric charge to the air? How authentic.

She held his gaze, and his breath quieted to a calm and even rhythm. “I got you,” she whispered. The tension in his body relaxed under the pressure of her hand; their breathing synced. As she rubbed her lips together, her fear subsided.

Time to get to work.

Marisol washed her hands, keeping the man in her view. She pulled gloves from the boxes lined against the wall and snapped them on. “I need to remove your shirt... thing.”

He unclasped his cape and nodded toward his back. Marisol ran her hands over his back in search of the zipper. His costume seemed like an enhanced wetsuit. Once she found the hidden zipper, she undid the top half. She pulled it away from his body, careful not to hurt him more. He helped her by shrugging the layer off.

The suit was heavy with what looked to be Kevlar, neoprene, and metal plating. All those major layers practically doubled his size. Compared to a pair of sweatpants and a ski mask, this costume was official.

More impressive than the suit, his naked upper body revealed him to be both a weapon and a thing of beauty, with broad, sinewy shoulders and muscular ridges carved into his torso. Unlike the other masked loons, this one had worked out. A lot. She’d have to grab some paper towels to wipe the drool from the corners of her mouth.

The metallic object protruding from his side yanked back her focus. Buried in his side was a large pair of forceps.

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